OCZ NIA – Neural Impulse Actuator

OCZ Neural Impulse Actuator (NIA) is an innovative device that allows you to control games and practically everything on your computer with your brain or more exactly with your thoughts and not only by them. You should have in mind that the NIA is not a complete replacement for your mouse or keyboard, but an additional accessory that can give you better control of your PC, but you may still need to use additional controllers for better functionality. What the Neural Impulse Actuator actually does is to translate electrical biosignals of your body directly into computer commands… these include brainwaves, eye and muscle movements. You can combine the readings of multiple bio signals by building a custom game profile so that a given thought can be translated to the PC as a fire command in the game (simulating the pressing of the left mouse button for instance). The NIA comes with some predefined profiles that will allow you to start learning how to use the device and then you can extend and make your own gaming profiles to achieve the best results.

You should have in mind that NIA is not an easy device to master, it will take you a lot of time and effort to learn how to adequately use the device at first, because it is something new and not as straightforward as a mouse or keyboard that requires just to press a given button. So controlling your PC with your thoughts is not as easy as you think, because you’ll have to learn to control the alpha and beta brainwaves that the device detects in a way, that they can be used for movement of your character in a game for instance. And that is the hardest part of learning to use the device, because gaining control of the eye and muscle movement detection by the device will require you just a few hours, but for the brainwaves functionality it could take you up to a few weeks.

For the moment OCZ NIA works just fine under Windows XP and Vista, but only in the 32-bit versions of these operating systems. There are already beta drivers available for 64-bit Vista OS, but if you are running 64-bit Windows XP you’ll not be able to use the NIA, so have that in mind before ordering the device. Also you should know that some users are experiencing problems with the device related to inadequate grounding of their computers or electromagnetic interferences, but these issues usually can be quickly solved by some reading and experimenting with the device. After all NIA is a the first very affordable commercial brain computer interface and you should be prepared for some unexpected things to happen, because that area of development is still quite new, but that makes the usage of the device even more fun and interesting, provided that you are willing to take that additional time. If you are not ready to experiment using this new cool gadget you better wait for some more time or just stick to using your mouse and keyboard for now…